1. Technical Field
The embodiments described herein relate to a test circuit and a method for controlling the same and, more particularly, to a test circuit to control a data strobe signal and a method for controlling the same.
2. Related Art
Conventional semiconductor integrated circuits will often support various input/output (I/O) modes e.g., X4, X8 and X16 based on the number of I/O pins included in the circuit. These I/O modes determine the data bandwidth, i.e. the amount of data processed in a given time period.
During manufacturing, several semiconductor integrated circuits are simultaneously tested in parallel in order to reduce the testing time. During testing, the data I/O pins must be allocated according to the I/O mode of the semiconductor integrated circuit to be tested. For example, if one semiconductor integrated circuit is tested in an X16 I/O mode, then sixteen data I/O pins, which are correspondent to the X16 I/O mode, must be allocated. Therefore, the number of semiconductor integrated circuits to be tested in parallel is restricted based on the number of data I/O pins. Reducing the number of semiconductor integrated circuits to be tested in parallel inevitably increases the testing time. If the test is carried out with fewer I/O pins, e.g. by changing a X16 I/O mode to an X8 I/O mode, to improve the test efficiency, then more difficult to detect a failure of a specific pin.